5 ms·

At $3 Million, New Award Gives Medical Researchers a Dose of Celebrity

31 points by zt 14y ago

jahewson 14y ago
Academia has managed to function just fine without this prize for a long time. What's the sudden need for this, aren't academics supposed to be intrinsically motivated people, rather than extrinsically motivated? I've always disliked the Nobel prize as a concept too. Is this prize really going to cause anyone to become an academic? If not then its just rewarding persistence and good luck, which just re-enforces the staus quo.
- belorn 14y ago
  I thought everyone said that researched was extrinsically motivated thanks to patents, and without those no one would ever do any medical research. Prize money and intrinsically motivations sounds as a nice alternative.
- amirmc 14y ago
  I do understand your viewpoint. I doubt anyone will become an academic because of the prize but perhaps some school students out there will consider science/academia because they hear about the work of one of the winners of the prize. Public exposure of important works (and the labs that did them) is still a good thing. Academia would function fine without such prizes but even then, people within the research community would still want to recognise and celebrate important work/advances somehow.
- melling 14y ago
  There are 7 billion people on the planet. How many of us are actually working the "important" problems? A few million? Tens of million? Designing a system or "game" that gets more people working on some of the more difficult problems is a . The X-Prizes and DARPA Challenges are others that seem to be effective: http://www.xprize.org/about/who-we-are http://www.xprize.org/about/who-we-are http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge.aspx http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/DARPA_Robotics_Ch... If we could channel all of the Words with Friends time, for example, into "Protein Folding with Friends", we might help to solve some really important problems. http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-05/ff_protein?currentPage=all http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-05/ff_prot...
- maxerickson 14y ago
  I don't think Milner is trying to motivate scientists, I think he is trying to see what happens when they get a break from writing grants (which is pretty contrary to enforcing the status quo). The people getting these certainly have more flexibility to work on blue sky projects.
  - bpicolo 14y ago
    Or he wants to encourage more people to work on immortality research.
Flenser 14y ago
Do awards like this lead to more research being done? It's easy to throw large sums of money at problems, it's harder to hand out lot's of smaller amounts. I suspect that if this money was awarded as smaller grants to many researchers it would have a much bigger impact.
belorn 14y ago
Wonder if this will help incentive invention, in the same way that prize money for security vulnerability incentive security researchers to vulnerabilities in software.
amirmc 14y ago
I'm impressed and anything that promotes and furthers fundamental science gets a thumbs-up from me. However, I do find the process a little odd. Specific things irk me like the ability to win multiple times and all winners also being on the selection committee. "Dr. Levinson [CEO of Genentech], in consultation with his colleagues, helped Mr. Milner select the first Breakthrough winners. These winners will form a committee that will select future winners, Mr. Milner said," I also dislike this [1], but I guess you have to start somewhere. The Nobel Committee's aren't without controversy [2]. The prize money seems unnecessarily large but that's an easy way to 'compete' for recognition with more established prizes. It also helps since more research is collaborative in nature so a split of the prize is still meaningful. It'll be interesting to see whether these prizes succeed in putting science more in the public eye. I'm not convinced they will unless the foundations involved also do the extra work of marketing and promoting the winners (rather than marketing the prize itself, as this article does). [1] I was a research scientist so this 'industry influence' in the selection process immediately rubbed me the wrong way (industry promoting it's own interests etc etc). Though those feelings may not be warranted in this case. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies
hirenj 14y ago
In response to the comments about whether this would provide incentive to those that would practice science, I would argue that it's probably not the point. Rather, it rewards those who think big and encourages risk-taking, both qualities that are not necessarily associated with the biological sciences, where incremental success is the norm. Quoting Milner: "With the mapping of the genome sequence there are expectations of significant progress in the next 10 or 20 years so I think the timing is really appropriate to create an incentive for the best scientific minds" [1]. In other words, with a timeframe of 10-20 years, you're talking about people already in science. To get up to this level in 10 years, you'd have to be pretty damn brilliant. Personally, I look at this like some icing on an already delicious cake, and cements my commitment to a strategy to fill in some huge gaps in biological knowledge within the next 5-10 years. [1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/20/breakthrough-prize-silicon-valley-entrepreneurs http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/20/breakthrough-p...

31 points by zt 14y ago

Academia has managed to function just fine without this prize for a long time. What's the sudden need for this, aren't academics supposed to be intrinsically motivated people, rather than extrinsically motivated? I've always disliked the Nobel prize as a concept too. Is this prize really going to cause anyone to become an academic? If not then its just rewarding persistence and good luck, which just re-enforces the staus quo.

belorn 14y ago
I thought everyone said that researched was extrinsically motivated thanks to patents, and without those no one would ever do any medical research. Prize money and intrinsically motivations sounds as a nice alternative.
amirmc 14y ago
I do understand your viewpoint. I doubt anyone will become an academic because of the prize but perhaps some school students out there will consider science/academia because they hear about the work of one of the winners of the prize. Public exposure of important works (and the labs that did them) is still a good thing. Academia would function fine without such prizes but even then, people within the research community would still want to recognise and celebrate important work/advances somehow.
melling 14y ago
There are 7 billion people on the planet. How many of us are actually working the "important" problems? A few million? Tens of million? Designing a system or "game" that gets more people working on some of the more difficult problems is a . The X-Prizes and DARPA Challenges are others that seem to be effective: http://www.xprize.org/about/who-we-are http://www.xprize.org/about/who-we-are http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge.aspx http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/DARPA_Robotics_Ch... If we could channel all of the Words with Friends time, for example, into "Protein Folding with Friends", we might help to solve some really important problems. http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-05/ff_protein?currentPage=all http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-05/ff_prot...
maxerickson 14y ago
I don't think Milner is trying to motivate scientists, I think he is trying to see what happens when they get a break from writing grants (which is pretty contrary to enforcing the status quo). The people getting these certainly have more flexibility to work on blue sky projects.
- bpicolo 14y ago
  Or he wants to encourage more people to work on immortality research.

Flenser 14y ago

Do awards like this lead to more research being done? It's easy to throw large sums of money at problems, it's harder to hand out lot's of smaller amounts. I suspect that if this money was awarded as smaller grants to many researchers it would have a much bigger impact.

belorn 14y ago

Wonder if this will help incentive invention, in the same way that prize money for security vulnerability incentive security researchers to vulnerabilities in software.

amirmc 14y ago

I'm impressed and anything that promotes and furthers fundamental science gets a thumbs-up from me. However, I do find the process a little odd. Specific things irk me like the ability to win multiple times and all winners also being on the selection committee. "Dr. Levinson [CEO of Genentech], in consultation with his colleagues, helped Mr. Milner select the first Breakthrough winners. These winners will form a committee that will select future winners, Mr. Milner said," I also dislike this [1], but I guess you have to start somewhere. The Nobel Committee's aren't without controversy [2]. The prize money seems unnecessarily large but that's an easy way to 'compete' for recognition with more established prizes. It also helps since more research is collaborative in nature so a split of the prize is still meaningful. It'll be interesting to see whether these prizes succeed in putting science more in the public eye. I'm not convinced they will unless the foundations involved also do the extra work of marketing and promoting the winners (rather than marketing the prize itself, as this article does). [1] I was a research scientist so this 'industry influence' in the selection process immediately rubbed me the wrong way (industry promoting it's own interests etc etc). Though those feelings may not be warranted in this case. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies

hirenj 14y ago

In response to the comments about whether this would provide incentive to those that would practice science, I would argue that it's probably not the point. Rather, it rewards those who think big and encourages risk-taking, both qualities that are not necessarily associated with the biological sciences, where incremental success is the norm. Quoting Milner: "With the mapping of the genome sequence there are expectations of significant progress in the next 10 or 20 years so I think the timing is really appropriate to create an incentive for the best scientific minds" [1]. In other words, with a timeframe of 10-20 years, you're talking about people already in science. To get up to this level in 10 years, you'd have to be pretty damn brilliant. Personally, I look at this like some icing on an already delicious cake, and cements my commitment to a strategy to fill in some huge gaps in biological knowledge within the next 5-10 years. [1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/20/breakthrough-prize-silicon-valley-entrepreneurs http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/20/breakthrough-p...